Dear Me: (A Deployment Letter)

Today’s deployment letter is a little different as the blogger had asked if she could post a letter she had already written on her blog that was to herself during deployment. I hope you enjoy reading her moving letter.

Dear You,

Yes, you going through that deployment…

I can’t promise you that it works out the way you lay in bed dreaming about. In fact, this deployment will change a lot more than you ever imagined. I know you have spent night after night crawling in bed at 5:30 pm just to avoid the time of day that you miss him most. When he comes home, sometimes you will look at the empty spot he sleeps in and wonder why you still feel like you are waiting.

But please know this: know that when he smiles at you, even though it’s not quite the same, you will see that little bit of who he was before he left. Please know, that through it all he will survive, and so you will you. Please know, that the perfect life you had planned will never happen, but what you will end up with is a life that you appreciate more than you will ever truly realize.

I know you have spent time fighting while he has been gone. I don’t know why some couples do that, but they do. And I know that some days you would rather fight with him and be angry than not hear from him at all, because every second he is on the phone with you is a moment that you know for sure, at least for now, that he is alive. And I know that the days, sometimes weeks, in between those seconds feel like an eternity, during which you might go mad.

Comments

Wow. Sometimes writing to ourselves is just what the doctor ordered. And sending a letter to yourself in the mail and then not opening until a predetermined time years later is also incredibly insightful. You realize how far you’ve come since writing that letter to yourself years earlier.